‘Riverdale’: So Is the Gargoyle King Real, or Nah?

The Riverdale Season 3 premiere introduced us to a brand new adversary for the town’s plucky teens, one more fearsome than the serial killer the Black Hood. The Gargoyle King is a True Detective inspired monster seemingly causing a rash of role playing game related suicides. But based on new evidence from last night’s (October 25) “Chapter Thirty-Eight: As Above, So Below,” is The Gargoyle King even real? Or nah?

Spoilers for the episode past this point.

The Gargoyle King, or what we assume is the Gargoyle King because up until now it hasn’t said “hey, I’m The Gargoyle King, what up,” seems to be a figure made of sticks and animal bones (and sometimes a meat face). And it’s been glimpsed three times so far in the first three episodes.

The first time was at the end of the premiere, when Jughead (Cole Sprouse) discovered Dilton Doiley (Major Curda) and Ben Button (I still can’t get over that name) kowtowing in front of an enormous sculpture, two chalices in front of them and weird carvings on their backs.

The second time was in the woods during the second episode when Jughead and Betty (Lili Reinhart) went to meet Ethel (Shannon Purser). They had discovered that she was playing a game called Gryphons & Gargoyles with Dilton and Ben, and their belief in the Gargoyle King at the center of the game, as well as its magical powers, led the two boys to take their own lives. Instead of meeting Ethel, Betty and Jughead encountered the Gargoyle King, ambulatory this time. They ran away. Smart choice!

Photo: The CW

And the third time was the end of last night’s episode when Ethel, confined to the hospital after also trying to take her life during a G&G game with Jughead, thanked the Gargoyle King for his wisdom, and informed him (it?) she had distributed game manuals to the entire school… Basically a way of spreading it (his?) gospel. The camera turned from Ethel to The Gargoyle King, who was in her hospital room. He (it?) waved its sticks around, and that ended the episode.

So, so far, we’ve had three instances of the Gargoyle King showing up on screen, and only one where multiple people saw it. We’ve broken down a few theories about the identity of The Gargoyle King previously, but currently the only through-line is Ethel. It stands to reason that when Betty and Jughead encountered the Gargoyle King in the woods, it was Ethel dressed up in a costume, and in the hospital she was imagining it.

Adding fuel to this is that the season is openly inspired by True Detective. That show revealed their Season 1 villain, The Yellow King, was a stick and bone shrine that the main worshippers were imagining as something greater than it was (it was a bunch of sticks).

We’ve also already established that some sort of seizure-powered hallucinations are going around: Betty thought her niece and nephew were floating in the air before she conked out with a seizure; and later Ethel did the same.

There’s a few pieces of evidence that point to The Gargoyle King being real, though. First, Betty and Jughead both noted that what they saw was too tall to be Ethel; though of course that could be a red herring.

More compelling is the fact that all the parents in town had previously played Gryphons & Gargoyles as kids, and are so terrified of the game, they put aside their differences (some of them legit want to kill each other) to try and stop the game from spreading in town. That points to something real; though at this point we don’t know what, exactly.

So is the Gargoyle King real? Or a mass hallucination? We’ll have to stay tuned to see.